An Indecently Fast Proposal
by imagineif
Summary: What if Ross had taken a different approach when he found out that Emily was getting married again? RE
1. Chapter 1

**An Indecently Fast Proposal**

When he realised it was Emily on the phone, Ross couldn't help becoming hopeful – of something. He didn't dare think what she could suddenly say, after their divorce, that could make him feel happy again. The months since their marriage broke up had been a confusing time of anger and hurt, where not only his marriage, but everything else had gone wrong. Twice divorced! No home! Anger management problem!

Emily should have trusted him. Instead, when he'd asked her whether she trusted him, telling her that their whole marriage rode on the answer to the question, she had just said no. Just like that. Why couldn't she trust him? He was a trustworthy guy. What had he ever done to her? Okay, appearances _were_ against him. He writhed under the memory of having said the wrong name, and the business with the plane – but she should have believed him when he had had said that those things didn't mean she couldn't trust him, because he was telling the truth. He would not tell someone he loved her and wanted to be with her unless he meant it.

As well as being hurt, he was, well, angry. Her lack of faith in him was an insult and he felt a great need to make clear to her the injustice of this, and hopefully, make her feel really really small. He'd spent a lot of time rehearsing scathing speeches, to the utter boredom, and sometimes outright annoyance of Joey and Chandler, who were no longer making any secret of wanting him out of their apartment. He took up too much space with his loud voice, his demands for commentary and his pacing of the room. Chandler was making the most pathetic excuses to escape the apartment, spending all of him time around the girls. Joey wasn't much better. He had not even wanted to get involved in his breathing and vocal technique.

'I want to make it really cutting. I want to make her feel really bad for what she's done to me,' Ross explained to Joey, only earlier that day, 'You should want her to feel bad, so you've got to help me on this.' Joey was the one who'd expressed his feelings so strongly about Emily's demands.

'Yeah,' Joey said, putting down the script he was trying to learn, 'I do want her to feel bad, but even more, I want you to rehearse somewhere else. I'm trying to get my lines and I can't concentrate with you yelling.'

'I am not yelling!' Ross yelled, 'I'm just making my point, forcefully.' His satisfaction in getting the last word here was blunted by the way Joey received it – with a roll of the eyes and a rapid departure, script in hand. Fine, fine, Ross had thought, stalking about the apartment. He could do it on his own. He didn't need any help, of any kind, from anyone. He had a tertiary education, didn't he? And Joey would only make a joke of it anyway.

Even so, at being abandoned, he would have liked to have kicked something, but his awareness that nothing within kicking reach belonged to him kept him under control. He would manage on his own. He'd refine his speech and he'd use it, and Emily would be shocked into silence, just as soon as she broke her silence called him for some unforeseen reason, because he was not the one who was going to call her.

Then the phone had rung and she was there, on the other end of the line. He dropped his script on the floor, and in the crazy way that paper has, it floated a long way sideways. Without it, he couldn't remember a single word he'd rehearsed.

'Hello Ross,' she said. She sounded just the same as ever. How could she sound so cool so soon? And what on earth did she want? Now that she had called him, he couldn't imagine a reason why she would call, and he couldn't imagine why he had ever thought that he would get to use one of his speeches on her, if he could remember any part of them. Damn, he should have written them down.

'Hello Emily,' he said, suddenly nervous. Now that he'd forgotten what he had planned to say, he had no idea where to begin. 'W-what can I do for you.' In response to a kick from his ego, which was wondering where his spine had gone, he added, 'If it's about the wedding expenses, my father has paid every cent he's going to pay.'

'No. No it's not about the wedding. Not that one.' She stopped speaking and the silence allowed him to absorb the magnitude of the words Not that one.

'What do you mean, "not that one"?'

'I – I thought you ought to know. I don't expect you'll care in the slightest, but you should hear it from me and not someone else. Assuming that any of my family and friends would ever talk to you again.' She paused. 'I'm getting married again.' She was getting married? He sat down in shock. They had only just got divorced. Only a few months ago, they had had their wedding, the day they had expected would be the happiest of their long lives together. By rights they should still be newlyweds – now she was planning to do that with someone else? Already?

'What! You can't be serious!' he exclaimed. 'You can't get married.'

'Why not?' Emily said, 'We're divorced now.'

'H-how can you just get married again? One minute you marry me, then you go and marry someone else. It's a marriage, not a – a pair of shoes. You're supposed to take it seriously!'

'Don't you dare talk to me about being serious. I'm not the one who couldn't keep away from my ex,' Emily retorted, 'I didn't turn the whole wedding into a bad joke!' She hung up.

'Don't you dare hang up on me, don't you dare!' Ross yelled, trying to call her back. But she didn't pick up and he banged the telephone receiver in frustration. There was an ominous crack.


	2. Crossed Wire

**Crossed Wire  
**

Ross had tried to mend the phone and couldn't, but he thought he'd just leave it and wait for the others to notice. It still worked, sort of. That was what mattered. They shouldn't make phones so fragile so that the least bit of wear and tear made them crack apart. Anyway what was so important about a phone when you came down to it?

His life was falling apart here. Emily was getting married again, not that he cared about that so much, because he was over her, after all. If she could get over him, he could get over her, and much better than she could, that was for sure. But anyone was entitled to feel shaken at the idea that that their ex was getting married again, after such a short time. Married? Actually married? Just like that? And what did she have to say about it? Only that 'We're divorced now.' Oh yes, they were divorced now, sure, but was that any reason to just suddenly get married again? He could grab someone off the street this afternoon and go to city hall, if being divorced now was a reason enough.

But that wasn't it. She must have fallen in love with someone else and that meant that she had fallen out of love with him, and so for the first hour after the call, he felt as though he didn't want to see anyone. They didn't want to see him anyone, he thought. Everyone had abandoned him. They were keeping away from him because he was the stupid guy who said the wrong name and kept doing stupid things. He was a drag. They, like Emily, were all getting on with their lives while he was just stuck.

Of course, he thought suddenly, Emily could be trying to call back, to explain herself. But she couldn't call back if the phone was broke.

He checked the phone to see whether it had a dial tone. It did, although the receiver had to be held in two hands. Stupid of him, he thought to himself. What would she call him for? A second time? She wasn't going to change her mind, and she certainly wasn't going to call to say that it was a joke. She could do jokes, of a kind, but everything had become deadly serious after the wedding. Her news had been no prank. If she called again, it would be sure to be some other dreadful news like she was expecting triplets – no, they'd already had that with Phoebe – or that the guy she was marrying someone like his uncle or something.

The phone rang and he raced to answer it. It was his uncle! He let out an involuntary scream.

'Huh?' his uncle said into the phone. 'Are you alright? You want I should call an ambulance or something?'

'No, no, I'm fine,' Ross said. Just his uncle. It was just a coincidence that he was on the phone, just as he was thinking some dreadful thought about him that was completely ridiculous anyway.

'People have been saying you've been going a bit bananas,' remarked his uncle.

'Who me?' Ross said. He was good at anger and it flared up again. How dared people gossip about him. There was nothing wrong with him at all! He had a slight anger management problem, but wouldn't anyone have a slight problem if they'd been through all the troubles he had been through. In fact, he was probably doing even better than average. He could bet that Chandler or Joey would not be handling it so well, if they'd been through what he'd been through…

'You know where your parents are? I've been trying to get a hold of them.'

'Er no, I don't. Maybe they went away for the weekend.' He avoided contact with his parents; his father just wanted to complain about the expense, and his mother just wanted to set him up.

'Could be. I've got some news. Guess one person in this family's got to make a success of a wedding,' his uncle said. Ross stifled another scream. It sounded like he was choking. 'Are you sure you're all right?' his uncle inquired. 'You don't sound too good.'

'I – I'm fine,' Ross croaked. This couldn't be happening, it just couldn't.

'I've heard there's a bug going round.'

'Really, I'm fine.'

'I really don't understand you,' his uncle said reflectively, 'English girls are real cute,' his uncle said, sounding pleased with himself. 'I wouldn't have let yours go so easily.' Easily? He thought Ross had let Emily go easily? 'I'm marrying a girl from England.' How could his uncle be saying such things to him? He just didn't want to know these kinds of things. Ross's family weren't noted for their sensitivity and tact, but this was going too far. If his uncle was getting married to some English woman there was no need for him to call Ross with the details. A card when it was about to happen was quite enough disclosure.

'You know her of course,' his uncle continued, sending Ross into a state of near shock. First she had said that she was getting married again and then…

'What!' Did his uncle think he'd be remotely pleased to hear a thing like this? The idea of someone like his uncle, middle aged, overweight, hairy with someone young like Emily was grotesque.

'Don't sound so surprised, there's a lot of go in me still,' his uncle chortled.

'Don't you think the age difference matters?' Ross asked, incredulously.

'Well if I don't mind, and she don't mind, I don't see that it's anyone else's business,' his uncle said haughtily. 'I won't hear a word against Cynthia.' The name was a blank to Ross until an elderly aged face with dyed red hair came into mind.

'Oh, Cynthia,' Ross said, more relieved than he could have imagined. Cynthia must be fifteen years older than his uncle of course, but he had no objections, no objections at all.

'That's who I said, Cynthia,' his uncle said, as though he was simple minded, 'Are you sure you're okay? I can get someone sent around to see you.'

'I'm fine, just fine,' Ross said, almost laughing hysterically. He'd been so preoccupied with Emily that he'd foolishly assumed that the conversation was about her. 'You two have a great life, congratulations.'

After he hung up he sat for a moment, absorbing this. Cynthia, not Emily. Have a great life. He wished he could have a great life. Or even a life. Instead he was twice divorced, living on sufferance in someone else's apartment…

He still had friends. Chandler and Joey might not be happy about the phone, but until they found out, he'd been okay with them, and maybe some of the others would be at Central Perk…


End file.
